SwimWay | FAQ: How Do The Availability Pages Work (Parent & Baby Lessons)

Following on from our previous FAQ post "How Do The Availability Pages Work (Children's Lessons)", we now bring you an in-depth guide of how to book for parent and baby lessons (ages 3 - 36 months) at our various locations.

As with our children’s lessons, when booking into our parent and baby classes, you are able to view all the spaces we currently have available on our website before contacting us.

By visiting the “Availability, Prices & Dates” section of our website, you can select the relevant course, then location, then when on the venue page, scroll down and select the “Click Here For All Info (Term Time)” button. This will open a page that has all the information you need to send a booking request to our offices, including term dates, prices, booking conditions, availability, times, days, etc.

Anything not listed on the page will have already been booked. The page clearly shows the venue, day, time and instructor of each space we still have available. Along with this information, there are two further columns:

Age Guide

Number of Spaces

These are extremely important to keep an eye on when sourcing your spaces, as if you choose the wrong time for your child’s age group, you will inevitably delay your booking and perhaps even miss out on your preferred space.

An example of the different types of options that may appear on the availability sheet

To break down some of the examples above:

The Monday 11:30 slot is with instructor David at Kensington. Listed as “OPEN SPACE”, with 4 spaces remaining (minimum 2 children required). This is because there aren’t any children currently booked in the lesson yet, and to ensure we are not running at a loss, we can only open the bookings if there are a minimum of 2 children booking in. Some locations offer 1:4 lessons, and some offer 1:5 lessons so the number of spaces listed in an open slot could be 4 or 5 depending on where you are booking, and the minimum requirement can change, also depending on venue or time of the year. If you see this space listed, then we will accept a booking for any age group if all booking requirements are met. For a fuller example of what you may see, the Tuesday and Thursday 11:30 lessons are listed with 4 spaces available, but no minimum requirement

The Monday 09:30 space is a slot with instructor David at Kensington. Listed as “18 – 24 months”, with “0” under number of spaces. This means the space is -reserved for children that are aged between 18 and 24 months at the start of the term, but is fully booked and no further children can join the class.

The Tuesday 10:30 space is with instructor Gisa at Kensington. Listed as an “12 – 18 months”, with “1” under number of spaces. This means there are 3 children aged between 12 and 18 months already booked into that space, and there is one slot remaining. If you want to book one of these lessons, we advise getting in touch ASAP due to the limited availability.

The Wednesday 11:00 space is with instructor David at Kensington. The lesson is for children between the ages of 24-36 months, and currently has 3 spaces open. This means that there is only 1 child booked into the class, so we have plenty of space for up to 3 more children. You may wonder why there wasn’t a minimum requirement for this lesson – it is because the booking was probably taken a couple months in advance, and we place no booking conditions when booking that far ahead. If we do not manage to find any further children to book into the lesson, and there are no suitable alternatives for the one child booked in, we will go ahead with the classes with no change in lesson fee.

The Wednesday 09:30 space is with instructor David at Kensington. The lesson is for children between the ages of 3-6 months, and currently has 3 spaces open. We do not have a huge amount of demand for this age group, so it it likely that we will only have one lesson available, if any at all. Unfortunately, if the time we are offering for this age group is unsuitable for you, we will not be able to offer any alternatives without imposing a minimum child booking condition.

SwimWay offers parent and baby lessons for children aged 24-36 months, but you may notice that we also list 1:1 lessons at many of our venues as available for children aged 2-3 years. This is because sometimes children aged between 2-3 years are ready to move up to the children’s lessons. However, we will only offer 1:1 lessons for this age group if they are not swimming in P&B lessons. 1:2 lessons are not suitable as children under 3 years of age require more support in the water, and managing two children under 3 years without assistance from the parents becomes a health and safety hazard.

Sometimes children reach the age of 3 years but are not ready to move to children’s 1:1 or 1:2 lessons yet. This could be due to them just needing a little more time with a parent/guardian still present, or simply because the afternoon lesson times are not suitable for the client yet. In this case, we can sometimes allow children aged over 3 years to continue swimming in the parent & baby classes at our discretion, depending on availability. We cannot allow the advanced age to affect any other children in the class, so we need to be cautious about this type of booking. Sometimes we will only be able to offer this booking if the client fills all the other spaces in the lesson themselves with children of a similar age/ability.

SwimWay will initially book according to age groups (3-6, 6-12, 12-18, 18-24 and 24-36 months) although we do take into consideration previous swimming experience. If after the first lesson our instructors think a different class will suit you and your baby better, then a member of the SwimWay office team will call you to discuss this. Do not worry if your child is booked into a class that is one above or below your child’s age group. We will always take experience into consideration when booking, so you will have been booked into a class that suits your child’s swimming level, as well as being as close as possible to an age match.

Additionally, the columns that are highlighted in blue and underlined are hyperlinks that will take you to a page on our website where you can view more information about the venue and the instructor.

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SwimWay Swimming School

SwimWay is the leading home visit Swimming School in London. Since 2005, the company has developed a reputation for providing high quality swimming lessons for parents & babies, children and adults. Locations include exclusive private developments, homes, schools and gyms around London.